Island Hot Spots: The Challenge of Climate Change

Island Hot Spots: The Challenge of Climate Change

Chapter:

(p.91)
SixIsland Hot Spots: The Challenge of Climate Change

Source:

Beyond Cladistics

Author(s):

David Bramwell

Publisher:

University of California Press

DOI:10.1525/california/9780520267725.003.0006

More than 50 percent of the world's plant species and 42 percent of all terrestrial vertebrate species are endemic to the thirty-four biodiversity hot spots. Islands are of particular importance in a biodiversity conservation context as they cover about 5 percent of the Earth's land surface but have more than 35 percent of the world's vascular plants including about 50,000 endemics. Island organisms have always been especially vulnerable to human activities. Because of human-induced climate change, native species face further threatening challenges including a rise in sea level of, according to recent estimates, between 2 and 15 meters in the next 100 years. Over 35 years ago, Sherwin Carlquist, in his book Island Biology (1974), defined a series of characteristics common to many organisms from islands throughout the world as the island syndrome. From a conservation point of view, it is informative to consider some of the island syndrome characteristics in the context of climate change. The characteristics of Carlquist's island syndrome do not seem to help either adaptation or migration.

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